Northern Ireland (Ministerial Appointments and Regional Rates) Bill

Debate between Natascha Engel and David Anderson

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 24th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman must ask for the leave of the House, as it is the second time he has spoken. I am sure that he will be given it.

[Mr Anderson]

With the leave of the House, I want to apologise for the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), who has been at the dentist all day—no doubt preparing for his photoshoots. I want to thank everyone who has said kind words about me, particularly those who did not mean them.

I will not take long, but I want to mention one thing that has stayed with me during all my time in this House. In the winter of 2007, the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee was doing an investigation into community restorative justice. I was sitting in a minibus behind Sir Patrick Cormack. To his left sat a mountain of a man named Maguire. It was a dark, cold night, and we got off the bus at a community centre where that man was going to speak to some young people. Patrick said to me, “David, that’s the hardest thing I’ve had to do in my life.” I said, “What’s that, Patrick?” He replied, “That man just told me that he had committed two murders on behalf of the IRA. Now he is going in there to tell young people not to follow his path.” Patrick talked about losing colleagues, including Ian Gow and Ross McWhirter, and my heart went out to him, but he then said that we had to put those things to one side and act as parliamentarians. That is exactly what we are asking people to do today. People have asked questions about the blockages that are making it impossible to move forward, and they may well be right, but the Secretary of State and I both know that that is the hand we have been dealt and that we have to try to move things forward.

I reiterate that I do not believe any of these issues to be unresolvable. On equalities, I do not believe that asking the Unionist parties to move and to bring Northern Ireland into line with the rest of the United Kingdom it is too big an ask. Indeed, I have been led to believe that a majority vote in Stormont in November 2015 agreed that that should happen, but the process was then blocked by a petition of concern. On the Irish language, we are asking for what the other parts of the UK have—namely, for the proposal to be put on a statutory footing. At the same time, we must recognise the real issues around the heritage of the Ulster Scots and put forward work to develop those areas.

On the renewable heat incentive, I reiterate that Sinn Féin should stop making its unreasonable demand that the leader of the DUP should step aside. That would be a huge step in the right direction. On legacy, despite all the criticisms, we need a system that will protect all victims, that treats them all equally and that, as far as possible, brings justice and closure to them and their families. I do not believe that any of those are unreasonable requests. We should call the bluff of those who are trying to block this process and get them back to doing the jobs that they volunteered to do in the first place.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Natascha Engel and David Anderson

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Natascha Engel]

That is exactly right and it is why the debate today has been a missed opportunity. We would all like to do something quickly about curbing the excesses of the wrong kind of lobbying, but the Bill captures the right sort of lobbying—exactly the sort that we as politicians should encourage. We want people to influence the way that we make decisions because it is their democratic right to do so, and those are not the sort of people that we want to criminalise.

It is on trade unions that I have the greatest problems. In the run-up to the 2005 general election I worked as the trade union liaison officer for the Labour party, and straight after the general election I helped to co-ordinate the last round of political fund ballots, so I know from personal experience just how heavily regulated trade union political activity and financial matters are. They are extremely heavily regulated. Membership records are up to date. Trade unions must have up-to-date membership records; otherwise they would be cutting down their own income. When they ballot members for strike action, they need to know who those members are and where they live, and when they want them to participate in internal elections, it is in their own interest that their membership records are up to date. They are also kept up to date by law.

Trade unions are democratic and accountable institutions. The Leader of the House implied that trade unions are somehow unaccountable institutions. That is absolutely not so. Any trade union member has the right to opt out of paying into a political fund. Members may choose not to pay the political levy. Every 10 years they are balloted about whether they want a political fund in their trade union. Also, in those ballots every 10 years—we are going into the fourth one now—more than 90% of members who vote are in favour of keeping their political fund. These are massive figures, which we as political parties can only dream of.

It is important to remember that freedom of affiliation is a fundamental pillar of our democracy. Before we rush into changing the way that these very important institutions work in society, we should reflect more carefully on what the perfectly foreseeable consequences of such legislation could be. The Bill is badly drafted. I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) that it may be a deliberate attempt to do something else.

[Mr Anderson]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Natascha Engel]

I need to finish quickly so that other Members can come in.

The Bill is badly drafted because it is badly motivated. It is a panicked response to corrupt activities that have been taking place and are already against the law. The current law captures everything that has happened in the past, but it was broken. It needs to be better enforced. The Bill will do nothing to change people’s behaviour, but it will stop non-party campaigners speaking out for or against candidates and policies 12 months before a general election. That worries me.

I look forward to voting against the Bill tonight. I hope it goes the way of the boundary review, Lords reform, the alternative vote referendum and all the other pieces of gerrymandering dressed up as constitutional reform, and that it ends up in the bin.

Blacklisting

Debate between Natascha Engel and David Anderson

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

I am surprised that the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) made that final connection, because I did not think that such a comment would be made during the debate.

The Secretary of State asked: why have this debate now? My response is: at last. We as trade unionists—I am a member of the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians and the GMB, and a former trade union organiser—have been campaigning on this issue, which we know has been going on, mainly in the construction industry, but possibly in many other industries too, for many years.

It is also important to note that it is almost exactly 100 years since Robert Tressell wrote “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists”, which was based on poverty wages, people’s terror of losing their job, and conditions at work that were almost impossible to bear. It has descriptions of people literally dying at work in the construction industry because conditions were so bad. It is only as the result of the introduction of the trade union movement, which led to decent health and safety laws, that the kinds of conditions described in the book have, thankfully, stopped.

If we look at the effect of blacklisting—I want to widen the debate a little—we will see that it undermines every single one of those hard-fought trade union rights that we have won. It also undermines decent, good, honest people who go to work.

[Mr Anderson]

Does my hon. Friend agree that anyone who is blacklisted because they have raised health and safety issues is actually being blacklisted for carrying out a legal duty? Every employee who has a concern about a health and safety issue has a legal responsibility under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 to report it. These people are not just being sacked, they are being refused access to work, so the problem is compounded by what employers are doing.

[Natascha Engel]

The one point that I want to make in my short speech is exactly that: not only are people raising legitimate issues; it is their legal duty to do so. Blacklisting is illegal, and it is illegal for a very good reason. Trade union organised workplaces are safer places to work, and for that reason, they are also more productive places to work. Blacklisting undermines every single one of those issues.

We need to remind ourselves of what the construction industry really is and what it means to be a construction worker. These are not office jobs; they are dangerous, risky jobs. People often work at great heights or with gas, electricity or asbestos, and they often have to travel miles away from home. It is insecure work, dependent on insecure contracts. As my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), the shadow Secretary of State, has said, people move away from their homes to get to these jobs and, once they are there, they do not know when they will get their next job. People are not paid much money for these jobs. Some are directly employed, but there is a system of bogus self-employment—of indirect employment through sub-contracting—which makes this a dangerous industry in which to work, and blacklisting only adds to that danger.

I want to build on what my right hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell) said about the Olympic village and the Olympic park. UCATT has proof that a different set of rules was applied to the Olympic park and the Olympic village. As has been said, in the main the park directly employed people on what were complicated construction jobs, and the number of accidents and injuries was far lower than that on the site of the Olympic village, which was arguably a far more straightforward site because it involved building housing. Sixty-six per cent. less people on the Olympic park suffered accident or injury than on the Olympic village, which had a system of sub-contracting and lots of casual labour. That statistic in itself demonstrates the importance of direct employment in the construction industry, and the importance of trade unions.

The Department of Trade and Industry, as it was in the good old days when Labour were in government in 2007, produced a report about health and safety representatives—this goes back to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson)—stating that safety reps save the economy between £181 million and £578 million per annum. Even given the standards used by the Government and the comments of the hon. Member for Daventry, those are staggering savings for our economy. Trade union health and safety reps prevent between 8,000 and 13,000 workplace accidents. For trade unions to be present in the workplace is positive.